New Tin Mining Puzzle Experiences Land at Geevor Tin Mine

The ladders have gone. Your shift is over, the pasty supper is waiting up top, and the only way back to the surface is to solve your way through a box full of cryptic puzzles. That is the scene waiting for visitors at Geevor Tin Mine.

Truro based escape room company Enigma Escape Cornwall has handed over two hand-built tin mining themed puzzle experiences to the world heritage site in Pendeen, to be enjoyed by visitors as part of their day out.

The company, which has been nominated for a TERPECA award, is run by husband and wife team Megan Eastwood-Wright and Oli Eastwood-Wright. The pair designed and built both experiences themselves, one set around 19th century Cornish tin mining and the other in the modern day.

Down the mine, ladders missing

The 19th century box drops you underground with a problem. The ladders have gone missing, your shift has finished, and you need to get back to the surface for a well-deserved pasty supper. To do it you have to crack the cryptic puzzles, open the locks, retrieve your ladders and find the key to your cottage door.

The modern experience takes a different route through the industry. You haul up a wagon full of ore and follow the metal refining process through a series of puzzles, with the aim of crafting an ingot of purest Cornish tin.

Ropes, magnets and bags of metal

Both take the form of bespoke boxes filled with mining facts, tactile props and fiendish puzzles. Enigma pride themselves on the quality of their props, so rather than generic paper puzzles you will find yourself handling physical items like ropes, magnets, detectors and bags of metal to work out the answers and open the padlocks.

The boxes are built as an activity for the whole family and should keep even the keenest escape room enthusiasts busy for 15 to 20 minutes.

They form part of Geevor’s S.T.E.M Hub, the mine’s fun and interactive learning space hosted by Learning and Outreach Manager Clint Hosking and his team. It is aimed at visiting families, particularly during school holidays. Clint also hopes to bring the puzzle boxes into local schools during educational visits.

Built in Cornwall, by hand

Oli explained how the boxes came about. “We have taken the skills we’ve learned over the many years of running, designing and building full size, award winning escape rooms and compacted them down into table-top experiences! These are the 7th and 8th mini escape rooms in a box we’ve built now! We try and build at least two new themes each year, and we take them to local trade shows, comic cons and events to give people the chance to try escape room style puzzles before they come and try the full size rooms! These mining boxes are jam-packed with hand-built mining props, themed puzzles and intricate clues!”

And there is more on the way. “We hope to have two new pop up boxes ready for the summer, themed around Willy Wonka and The Crystal Maze! And while that is all going on we are also hard at work building our latest, immersive 90 minute escape room experience in Truro – Cluedo!”